Up to 100,000 forced from Calgary homes by flooding

City of Calgary worker Jim Hawkins carries sandbags as city workers start to build a berm along Elbow Drive at 25th Street S.W. on Thursday as the Elbow River began to rise following heavy rains. A mandatory evacuation alert was issued for the communities around the Elbow River.Colleen De Neve
/ Calgary Herald

Water from the Bow River flooded through Bowness Park on Thursday as rivers in the Calgary area spilled over the banks.Colleen De Neve
/ Calgary Herald

Water from the Bow River flooded through Bowness Park on Thursday as rivers in the Calgary area spilled over their banks.Colleen De Neve
/ Calgary Herald

This is an aerial view of the Inglewood Golf Course as water from the Bow River floods the course.

The Sunnyside area experienced some flooding in the streets due to the higher than normal levels of water affecting the storm drains on Thursday.Tijana Martin
/ Calgary Herald

City of Calgary workers start to build a berm along Elbow Drive at 25th Street S.W. on Thursday as the Elbow River began to rise following heavy rains. A mandatory evacuation alert was issued for the communities around the Elbow River.Colleen De Neve
/ Calgary Herald

City of Calgary worker Jim Hawkins carries sandbags as city workers started to build a berm along Elbow Drive at 25th Street S.W. on Thursday as the Elbow River began to rise following heavy rains. A mandatory evacuation alert was issued for the communities around the Elbow River.Colleen De Neve
/ Calgary Herald

Paul Rowe wheels sandbags to his home to help prevent his basement from flooding before evacuating his home in mission on Thursday.Tijana Martin
/ Calgary Herald

City of Calgary workers start to build a berm along Elbow Drive at 25th Street S.W. on Thursday as the Elbow River began to rise following heavy rains. A mandatory evacuation alert was issued for the communities around the Elbow River.Colleen De Neve
/ Calgary Herald

Water from the Bow River flooded through Bowness Park on Thursday as rivers in the Calgary area spilled over their banks.Colleen De Neve
/ Calgary Herald

Calgarians stood on the deck of the 85th Street N.W. bridge over the Bow River as water from the Bow River flooded underneath, near Bowness Park, on Thursday.Colleen De Neve
/ Calgary Herald

City of Calgary worker Jim Hawkins carries sandbags as city workers start to build a berm along Elbow Drive at 25th Street S.W. on Thursday as the Elbow River began to rise following heavy rains. A mandatory evacuation alert was issued for the communities around the Elbow River.Colleen De Neve
/ Calgary Herald

The Elbow River is expected to peak between 3 and 5 a.m., said city director of water services Dan Limacher. The Bow River is expected to stop rising at that time but officials are waiting on upstream information to know when that river could crest.

Burrell says water will be spilling over the Glenmore Dam tonight, but there are no worries about its structural integrity.

“We’re not worried about a dam failure,” said Burrell. “It is designed to spill over but is structurally sound.”

With a few hours left until the Elbow River is expected to crest, city crews halted construction on a dirt berm along Elbow Drive in Mission just shy of 4th Street S.W.

Lights in Mission went out abruptly just before midnight, putting the neighbourhood into the dark, lit only by the flashing lights of emergency crews and dump trucks lining 4th Street waiting to dump piles of dirt onto the road for the berm.

An official from the city confirmed that crews have stopped working on the birm.

Meanwhile, downtown hotels continue to get calls from people seeking rooms.

"An unholy amount of calls, you don't know the half of it," said Shaun Moore of the Best Western in downtown Calgary. "I sold my last room about an hour ago. I don't have anything and I still keep getting calls."

Reynolds Ramos, of Holiday Inn Express, said all 56 rooms have also been booked, although he added that it was already busy becaue of Sled Island.

Police are asking residents in affected areas to self-evacuate and tape their door with a large 'X' so police can see which homes have been evacuated. They are also securing empty neighbourhoods to ward off looters.

There will be five more evacuation centres open by midnight, but that so far most people have gone to stay with friends and family rather than visit the existing evacuation centres at the Southland Leisure Centre, Acadia Recreation Complex and the Centre Street Church.

Getting in and out of the downtown core Friday will be difficult, said Deputy police Chief Trevor Daroux. He advised everyone to stay out of the area if possible as flooding is expected to affect the area around 6th Avenue at 1st Street S.E. north to 3rd Avenue at 7th Street S.E.

“If you don’t need to be downtown, please don’t go downtown,” he said.

All Calgary Board of Education and the Calgary Catholic School District school are closed tomorrow.

Flood damage is also causing disruptions to hospitals and clinics in High River, Canmore and Banff as well as Calgary’s Sheldon Chumir, which closed earlier Thursday evening.

Health Minister Fred Horne said the health response emergency plan was enacted but there is no imminent danger.

“Ground floors have been flooded and residents and patients have been moved to upper floors,” said Horne. “It’s really too soon to say what the extent of damage might be in health facilities, but all of the patients and residents and staff are safe.”

The province is reactivating its disaster aid committee used during the Slave Lake fire.

“They’ll be meeting tomorrow morning to talk about taking that blueprint and then nuancing it for this situation,” said Municipal Affairs Minister Doug Griffiths.

“I think it’s beyond a doubt that this is a disaster situation that we’re going to have to manage very quickly,” said Griffiths, who visited Calgary’s Emergency Operations Centre Thursday night.

“Once the floodwaters subside, people don’t want to wait to see what’s going to happen they want to start to know what action is now, so we’re going to be there to assist municipalities in assessing the damage and moving as quickly as we can.”

“Fire is so easy to see what the damage is, because it’s burned, but floods can be a lot more difficult to assess,” he added There have been no fatalities reported, he said.

“To our knowledge there are no missing persons or fatalities. There were rumours of a missing person but that’s not been confirmed either.”

The military has offered help, said Griffiths, including a helicopter to move a hospital generator needed. But no official requests have been made.

“Albertans are safe, they just need to continue to make sure they’re updated on information that’s being provided,” said Griffiths.

A tally of what the flood damage and evacuation efforts are costing won’t be known until Friday at the earliest.

“Tomorrow we’ll start to engage our finance department in tallying costs, where appropriate we’ll start we’ll be applying for disaster recovery programs under both the province and the federal programs,” said Burrell.

Sunnyside residents Sally and Mike McIsaac planned to spend Thursday night sleeping in the hallway on the fourth floor of their apartment. It was the couple’s last resort when their street-level unit was flooded with backlogged wastewater.

Standing outside in the rain with packed bags, they looked away from the Bow River and toward the police officer with a bull-horn, instructing them to find higher ground.

“I have no family here,” Sally said, through tears. “I have no friends here. Everybody is in Ontario.

“I need a place to stay right now.”

To Mike, the worst part was the lack of notice he feels they received.

“It’s nobody’s fault,” he said. “But ... had they told me hours ago I probably could’ve got somebody from my work to pick us up and get us out of here.

“But 10 minutes? By then they wouldn’t let people in unless they lived here.”

In June of 2005, one of the city’s worst flood years on record, heavy rain caused flood damage to about 40,000 homes, and 1,500 Calgarians were evacuated.

But city officials warn the current flooding situation poses a much more serious threat.

Peak flows downstream of the Elbow were expected to crest sometime after 3 a.m. early Friday, city officials say, and water levels aren’t expected to subside until Saturday afternoon.

“Depending on the extent of flooding we experience overnight, there may be areas in the city where people aren’t going to be able to get into until the weekend,” said Bruce Burrell, director of the Calgary Emergency Management Agency.

Flooding concerns prompted the closure of all CBE and Calgary Catholic School District schools on Friday.

City officials also closed the Calgary Zoo by midday Thursday, and Telus Spark announced it would be closed Friday.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi, speaking from Toronto on Thursday before boarding a flight back to Calgary, said the city is taking every precaution to deal with a serious flooding situation.

“While we have more resources than we did then, it’s quite possible the height of the river and the water will overcome defences like berms and sandbags, and we must be as prepared as we can.”

Residents living along the rivers watched anxiously as levels rose rapidly throughout the day.

Rideau resident Marianne Kasper watched anxiously Thursday as the water crept higher. She said she’s annoyed with the city for not sandbagging her home, which officials promised they would do following the floods eight years ago.

Kasper said she was told it was futile because the levels are expected to be much higher this time.

“They’ve given up,” she said.

Daughter Natalie Stevenson went searching for sandbags Thursday morning but there were none to be found. Neither want to leave, but they plan to obey the evacuation order.

The family had to renovate their basement after the 2005 flood. This time, Kasper said, they have no insurance coverage.

She spent much of Thursday moving things off the floor, assembling important documents and emptying the fridge and freezer — something learned from the last round of floods.

Mission resident Dolores Kraft also remembers the floods of 2005. At the time, she lived in an apartment on 26th Avenue S.W. that backed onto the Elbow River.

“It was horrendous,” recalled the 80-year-old. Water filled their garage to the ceiling and the couple spent a month living with their daughter.

Kraft now lives in another building — but it too backs onto the river. With an evacuation order in effect, she says she’s worried but prepared.

“My daughter called and said, ‘I’ve got a room ready.’ ”

Rae McConnell lives on the second floor of the Elbow Tower, the same building Kraft resides in.

McConnell, too, was evacuated eight years ago from the same apartment for three weeks.

“We made it last time,” she said. “It’s still a hassle, of course.”

McConnell expects to stick with her earlier plan to stay with her sister in Winnipeg.

The fact she’s headed from one city under an evacuation order in some areas to another city prone to floods isn’t lost on McConnell. She jokes about being a flood chaser.

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